Instructor: Deb Berkebile
Saturday, May 10th | 10am-4pm
Eco Printing is a form of natural dyeing where plant materials are bundled and use a direct contact printing method, drawing out pigments from plants to make interesting and surprising marks on protein (silk, wool) fibers which are transferred to fabric via steaming. Two for one bundling is a favorite technique. Learn how to make an iron blanket which dramatically changes and deepens the colors of the printed leaves. You will learn to make a bundle with a silk scarf using eucalyptus, oak, maple and some various leaves with high tannins. You are also encouraged to bring your own plant material to dye with, such as marigolds or cosmos.
Instructor Bio: Deb is an artist with an extensive background in textiles and quilt making. Recently, she has been exploring surface design and multi-media in her artwork. She is a naturalist and environmentalist at heart. Her current body of work explores satellite imagery and creating ‘false-color’ artistic depictions of remote sensed satellite images (Geographical Information Systems). She has ten quilts in her “Earth in Three Bands: R, G, B” Series: The Painted Desert, Eye of Sahara, The Great Salt Desert, Susitna Glacier, The Grand Canyon, Galileo Inspiration, The Great Lakes, Rocky Mountain Trench, Lena Delta, Meandering Mississippi, and Ribbon Lake. The vivid colors and their outstanding variations are what first drew her to these representations. She is also interested in activism and has been juried into the “OurStory” traveling exhibit about civil rights. Her pieces feature quilts celebrating the contributions of Martin Luther King/Rosa Parks and Sitting Bull “Lakota Warrior”. She has started a new series of work combining natural dyes and Shibori techniques. She uses rusted hand dyed fabric dipped into indigo; manipulating the fabric with an assortment of Shibori techniques has led to this series with Sashiko hand stitching for finishing numerous pieces. She creates all the fabrics she uses in her design process; i.e. surface design techniques, hand-dyeing and painted fabric, plus digital manipulation of images printed on fabric. She enjoys the challenges of creating original artwork that combines her passions and interests at heart.